About a week ago, I ran across Southern Baptist Ed Stetzer's Crosswalk.com article, Understanding the Emerging Church. There's no date given, so I don't know when it first appeared, but I found it to be the most helpful brief synopsis of the "conversation" that I've seen yet. Stetzer categorizes (yes, how modern of him) the emergents into three groups: Relevants, Reconstructionists, and Revisionists.

(Relevants) are just trying to make their worship, music and outreach more contextual to emerging culture.

Ironically, while some may consider them liberal, they are often deeply committed to biblical preaching, male pastoral leadership and other values common in conservative evangelical churches.

They are simply trying to explain the message of Christ in a way their generation can understand...

The churches of the "relevants" are not filled with the angry white children of evangelical megachurches. They are, instead, intentionally reaching into their communities (which are different than where most Southern Baptists live) and proclaiming a faithful biblically-centered Gospel there.

That's all good. The youth pastor grows a soul patch (known as a "jazz dab" in the 50s), the worship band learns some David Crowder songs and youth nights might even add a little more art and incense to the mix than was common a decade ago. No problemo. The Word is still the inspired Word of God, and the gospel message remains the same. I'm all for it, as is Stetzer. The relevants are the quiet side of the emerging church conversation.

Next, he describes the reconstructionists.

The reconstructionists think that the current form of church is frequently irrelevant and the structure is unhelpful. Yet, they typically hold to a more orthodox view of the Gospel and Scripture. Therefore, we see an increase in models of church that reject certain organizational models, embracing what are often called "incarnational" or "house" models...

Yet, God's plan is deeply connected with the church (see Ephesians 3:10). God's Word prescribes much about what a church is. So, if emerging leaders want to think in new ways about the forms (the construct) of church, that's fine -- but any form needs to be reset as a biblical form, not just a rejection of the old form. Don't want a building, a budget and a program? OK. Don't want the Bible, scriptural leadership, covenant community? Not OK...

I agree with Stetzer assessment yet again, and see folks like Derek Webb, Dan Kimball and probably Donald Miller as fitting into this somewhat more prominent part of the conversation. My concern is that too many reconstructionists are happy to promote and associate with the radical revisionists he describes next.

Right now, many of those who are revisionists are being read by younger leaders and perceived as evangelicals. They are not -- at least according to our evangelical understanding of Scripture. We significantly differ from them regarding what the Bible is, what it teaches and how we should live it in our churches...

Revisionists are questioning (and in some cases denying) issues like the nature of the substitutionary atonement, the reality of hell, the complementarian nature of gender, and the nature of the Gospel itself. This is not new -- some mainline theologians quietly abandoned these doctrines a generation ago. The revisionist emerging church leaders should be treated, appreciated and read as we read mainline theologians -- they often have good descriptions, but their prescriptions fail to take into account the full teaching of the Word of God...

To be in this conversation, we need to think biblically and critically. We should journey and partner with the "relevants," seeking to make the Gospel understandable in emerging culture. We can and should enter into dialogue with reconstructionists -- learning, discussing and applying together what Scripture teaches about church.

But, we can and must speak prophetically to revisionists that, yes, we know the current system is not impacting the culture as it should -- but the change we need is more Bible, more maturity, more discernment and more missional engagement, not an abandonment of the teachings of scripture about church, theology and practice. Every group that left these basics has ended up walking away from the faith and then, in a great twist of irony, is soon seen as irrelevant to the world they tried to reach...

Let's affirm the good, look to the Scriptures for answers to the hard questions, and, yes, let's graciously disagree when others hold views contrary to our best scriptural understanding of God, Bible and church.

Again, I'm in full agreement with Stetzer. Revisionists like Brian McLaren, Dave Tomlinson, Steve Chalke and Rob Bell are evangelical in that they are attempting to evangelize others with their message, but Apple Computer has long had evangelists who spread their message as well. Evangelicalism of The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy brand may be on the decline, but it has little in common with the revisionists.

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